Column: I’ve got the answer to stop the fatal stabbings and shootings
Date: Jan 11, 2007 10:36 AM
PUBLICATION: WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
DATE: 2007.01.11
PAGE: A11
BYLINE: Freelance Writer Don Marks
SECTION: Focus
WORD COUNT: 980

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Cooling off the hot spots
Some timely shock and awe could curb the mayhem

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I’ve got the answer to stop the fatal stabbings and shootings that have
been happening so often recently in downtown Winnipeg. I found that
answer in Seattle, Wash.

Like Winnipeg, Seattle has a very active bar scene downtown. In both
cities, people pour out of the bars at 2 a.m. on the weekend.

Some of the folks who have over-imbibed get over-macho and start
mouthing off. Sometimes things escalate, a fight breaks out, and people
break out the knives and guns. Winnipeg has had more than its fair share
of fatal stabbings and shootings lately.

Seattle’s late-night downtown bar scene is quite similar to Winnipeg’s,
except that in Seattle, the most popular bars, dance halls, concert
halls and outdoor patios are concentrated into one district. Winnipeg’s
downtown has three separate, popular night-spot areas; the Exchange
District, the Osborne Village/Corydon Avenue walk, and the banks that
have become bars on Main Street between Portage and Bannatyne.

Seattle and Winnipeg are exactly the same in that, at 2 a.m., the bars
empty and the streets are full of people heading home, or to a party.

Unfortunately, Winnipeg’s downtown has created too many Monday morning
headlines about mayhem and murder lately (one young man recently lost
his life to a knife outside a club on Main Street; another died in a
parking lot across the street; there have been shootings on Corydon,
etc.).

In Seattle, where I spent a night on my way home from a Roger Waters
concert in a place called George, Washington, I noticed a plethora of
cop cars all parked together in one spot, close to the bars I had been
“hopping” because they were so close to each other.

Having never seen 20 or more police cars in one place at one time, and
being a natural ambulance chaser, as all journalists and lawyers are, I
was hoping to witness a live street battle with machine-guns blazing, or
maybe even a terrorist incident. Alas, no such luck.

This just happened to be a particular night that Seattle police knew was
going to be extra busy. The bars were holding a special promotion; a
competition of sorts, so the police employed a strategy they call their
Bar Emphasis Team. And you can B.E.T. that civil behaviour, which is the
law on both sides of the border, was followed to the letter, because
police showed up in full force, patrolling on foot both among the civil
citizens returning to their homes after a fine evening, as well as the
drunks staggering around the streets looking for their cars, cabs or
women.

You see, even stupidly, obscenely drunk people calm down when they see
cops around. Loudmouths shut up, disagreements don’t turn into
arguments, and macho male posturing doesn’t turn into street fighting.

I had a chat with the Seattle police chief’s office and its media
relations officer, Sean Whitcomb, about our situation in Winnipeg.

Their solution was quite simple. When the Seattle Police Department
becomes aware that some special promotion or event is going to take
place downtown that is going to attract a lot of people, they hold a
special meeting of their Joint Assessment Team (which includes police,
the liquor control board and liquor licensing bodies) and they develop
practical plans to keep crime and other violations of the law (major and
minor) to a minimum. It isn’t a perfect system but it makes Seattle more
livable than Detroit, New York or Los Angeles.

“It’s not 100 per cent effective,” Whitcomb admitted. “We had
a fatal
shooting one night despite having a cruiser car parked right across the
street. Then again, we caught the perpetrator right away.” According to
Whitcomb, the answer is simple common sense. When he was a crime
supervisor in Seattle, and it was obvious where the hot spots were, he
simply stepped in and provided a strong police presence and things
calmed down.

In Winnipeg, we employ a large police presence when very large or
special events, such as a street festival or Grey Cup parade, are held.
But nowadays, it seems that every Monday morning, we read about a fatal
stabbing or shooting of a young adult in our downtown.

Life is precious. Isn’t it worth our every effort to save every life we
can? So why not treat every Friday or Saturday night in certain areas
like we treat special events? We don’t have to employ the massive force
that huge public events require, but can’t we focus our resources on the
trouble spots where we know that trouble might arise? There isn’t much
the police can do immediately to stop the drive-by shootings and random
muggings and rooming house homicides that happen between 2 a.m. and 6
a.m. on weekends over the wide geographic areas of our large inner city.
But we can cost-effectively take action in our three most popular
night-spot areas and prevent the sad testimonies to a “young man who was
generally a fun guy, kind and generous”, now dead, because he was in the
wrong place at the wrong time, stood up to the wrong guy, or simply got
too brave for his own good.

Just park five cruiser cars near Portage and Main, five at Osborne and
Corydon, and five at King and Bannatyne, and send 15 cops out to walk
around in full force from 1 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. Generally, when uniformed,
armed and badged police are around, bar beefs become bar talk, men are
less macho, and most of the bad behaviour calms down.

And the fists, feet, guns and knives are stashed. Hopefully, eventually,
they disappear. In a new, safe downtown.

And the lives of our young adults, even one life, are saved.

Don Marks is a freelance writer who lives downtown and likes to check
out new local entertainment acts, make new friends and socialize in bars
in all three of Winnipeg’s hottest night-spot areas. In peace.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !